Six months ago Dentsu officially closed on its $1.5 billion acquisition of CRM and digital media agency Merkle. In this episode, chief data and product officer John Lee discusses the integration of Merkle's data assets with the holding company.

For marketers considering bringing programmatic advertising in-house, Jounce Media founder Chris Kane has a word of advice: Break the process into steps. In this, our twentieth episode, Kane also touches on financial pressures faced by CMOs and the measurement games publishers play. This episode is supported by Acxiom.

Essence, digital agency to Google, was acquired by GroupM in 2015. In this episode, Chief Product Officer Andrew Shebbeare talks about the company's service model and Google's sudden brand safety crisis. Episode supported by Acxiom.

Sebastian Tomich, SVP of advertising and innovation for The New York Times, talks about the revenue mix at America's paper of record. He says that even as it doubles down on high-end brand partnerships, the Times is looking to offload day-to-day tactical media sales. "All of the sponsorships are becoming much more high end and much more involved on our side. What's going away is that tactical middle where you had media agencies sending us RFPs." Also in this episode: Do brands really care about fake news? Is the Times home page undervalued? And does the company care about data leakage? This episode is supported by Acxiom.

The Beeswax founder provides a company update and talks about a range of digital ad trends with his signature dry humor. It's all here – Snapchat, Google, Facebook, AppNexus, header bidding, consolidation and the long VC drought – and you'll want to hear the whole thing. Episode supported by Acxiom.

In a recent report, Forrester Research said quality concerns could lead marketers to scale back on programmatic in the short term and accept higher prices for verified inventory. "We're not saying pull out of programmatic. That's absurd," Melissa Parrish, Forrester VP and Research Director, explains in the latest episode of AdExchanger Talks. "We're saying, take advantage of the controls you have." This episode is supported by Acxiom.

Omnicom Group led all of its peers in the total value of its creative and media business wins last year. In this episode, its digital chief Jonathan Nelson talks about the data and technology strategy that contributed to those wins and recent changes in the marketing technology ecosystem. This episode is supported by Acxiom.

In the latest episode of AdExchanger Talks, mParticle CEO Michael Katz talks about the vision behind mParticle, his three-year-old startup that consolidates data feeds in the fragmented app ecosystem. (He describes it as an "API of APIs.") Katz sold his previous startup Interclick to Yahoo in 2011, and in this episode he also describes how he's doing things differently the second time around. This episode is supported by Acxiom.

Wunderman's competitive set is huge, since it competes in areas like data architecture (Acxiom, Epsilon), consulting (Accenture, Unbound) and digital creative (AKQA, SapientRazorfish). In this episode, North America CEO Seth Solomons talks about the agency's approach to machine learning, client data hygiene and measuring walled gardens. This episode is supported by Acxiom.

Sourcepoint once solely focused on helping publishers solve for ad blocking. Today it's pushing into subscription enablement for those media companies – and even bundling subscriptions across publishers. CEO Ben Barokas discusses his company's latest funding, its mission and trends in ad blocking and publisher monetization. This episode is brought to you by Acxiom.

The number of independent cross-device players continues to shrink amid a wave of consolidation. Last year Telenor snapped up Tapad, and Adelphic went to Time Inc. just this week. Drawbridge, led by CEO Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan, is the lone wolf in that space. 

Four months after its IPO, The Trade Desk is valued at $1.1 billion. The company is now using the $90 million raised by the offering to grow in areas like mobile, TV/video, private deals and global expansion. In this interview, Green holds forth on the company's strategic focus on buy-side customers - particularly agencies - and the future of programmatic business models, among other topics.  

Header bidding has been great for publishers and, as a rule, tough on sell-side platforms. In this discussion, PubMatic President Kirk McDonald talks about evolution of the programmatic selling model and where his company is making bets. "Header bidding has moved control of ad serving back to the publisher," McDonald says in this episode of AdExchanger Talks. "The evolution is putting publishers back in a place where they're controlling the tension around access to their impressions."

According to Nate Woodman, GM of demand solutions at IPONWEB, a small club of marketers is working on proprietary machine-learning models. Doing so won't be easy. "The challenge to the industry, and it's a daunting one, is to find a way to spread proprietary algorithms across programmatic platforms," he says in this episode. "Most brands aren't even close to realizing this vision, but some are making overtures." 

In this wide ranging discussion, Cadreon's Erica Schmidt discusses IPG's evolving programmatic revenue model, the slow evolution of the CMO, and the risk that ad tech consolidation will stymie innovation. See more episdodes at adexchanger.com/podcast

Integral Ad Science has evolved from a brand safety purveyor to a holistic arbiter of ad quality. What's next? In this episode, Knoll talks about the IAS product roadmap, and suggests the ability to track duration of ad exposure across media placements represents a new direction. He also discusses the company's financials and the possibility of a 2017 IPO.

Omnicom Group's analytics arm, Annalect, helped it capture a bunch of new business in 2016. And not only media agency accounts. "We've optimized the heck out of the media side of things for so long. Let's go back and do that for the creatives," North America CEO Erin Matts says in this episode. "That piece of it where data and analytics is reuniting media and creative … has been something clients really respond to." Also in this episode: Annalect's skunkworks culture, technology approach and obsession with cross-device identity in the age of walled gardens. Episode sponsored by Google AdSense.

Joe Zawadzki is a founder of multiple ad tech companies and a frequent angel investor. In this AdExchanger Talks podcast he discusses the forces changing programmatic buying, including the rise of header bidding and new access to retail data. He also describes the shifting roadmap at MediaMath and what he needs to bring as a leader and manager. Episode sponsored by Google AdSense.

Brian Adams was the CTO of AdMeld, an early stage sell-side platform acquired by Google in 2011. Then, after four years spent running aspects of Google's publisher business, he launched a consumer-facing startup with MightyTV, an app that uses data and machine learning to help people decide what TV and movies to watch. In this AdExchanger Talks podcast, he talks about life after Google and how machine learning will factor into user media consumption. Episode sponsored by Google AdSense.

In this AdExchanger Talks podcast, Lynda Clarizio, President of US Media at Nielsen, talks in depth about Nielsen's evolving research approach, which combines the company's classic panel-based approach with new digital and "census" methodologies. She also addresses critics of Nielsen and how networks have responded to Nielsen reports of linear TV declines. (They sometimes blame the ref.) And the discussion ends with a discussion of women in the media and ad tech sectors. Episode sponsored by Google AdSense.

Brian Lesser was promoted to run GroupM in North America last year after building its Xaxis trading desk into a billion dollar business. "My job is to transform GroupM to be much more about gathering data about consumers, because that's where our leverage is going to come from in the future." In this inaugural AdExchanger Talks podcast episode, Lesser discusses the evolving transparency debate, GroupM's ad tech investments and changes to the holding company model.  Episode sponsored by Google.